We’ll get to Trevor Noah and Salon’s 180-degree pivot on him in just a moment, but first some context. Since the days of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, to first Vietnam and then the Iraq War, all the way to 2008 when Hillary was a “big f***ing whore” and her supporters racists to 2015, when Hillary is the left’s savior, self-described “Progressives” have been known for their remarkable ability to cast-off their current morals and perform dramatic slashing Tony Hawk-style mid-air 180 degree pivots whenever it’s politically expedient (see also: Oceania versus East Asia/Eurasia). But they rarely happen as quickly as Salon’s 24-hour inversion on Trevor Noah, Viacom’s designated replacement for corporate spokesman Jon Stewart (nee Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz). It was learned — apparently after he landed the gig — that Noah has or had a remarkable tendency to drop lurid anti-Semitic “jokes” on Twitter. The result being the leftwing mob waking itself into action last night on Twitter, and Salon’s flip-flop illustrated above. As Ace of Spades co-blogger Jeff tweets, “Seriously, this is the most beautiful two-day juxtaposition ever.”
At NRO, Kevin D. Williamson charts “Mr. Noah and the Flood.” Beyond Salon being “always offended about something,” (Salon and the New York Times have daily completions to see who can hit the fainting couch first and hardest) “Why didn’t Comedy Central apply strict scrutiny here? There are a few answers to that question that are obvious — but not if you are inside the progressive cultural bubble. Those being:”
1. Comedy Central knows that Jon Stewart’s viewers are cheap dates. They are not very bright, and they are not very interested in the world around them. The function of The Daily Show is to flatter the prejudices of a certain segment of largely white and middle-aged metropolitan liberals. Daily Show viewers are not interested in original insight — indeed, the utterance of an original thought or the indulgence of an unpredictable angle of analysis would undermine the entire structure of the program. Daily Show viewers tune in so that they can be made to feel clever for continuing to believe the things they already believe. There is no reason to believe that Noah is going to fail to deliver those exceedingly modest goods.
2. Comedy Central was probably counting on the usual double standard, which is, generally, a safe bet. When a couple of nobody RNC staffers ran up a $2,000 bill at a lesbian-bondage-themed strip club — it is a big tent, after all! — that was a national story, with Jon Stewart providing a Muppet reenactment. (Really.) Bill Clinton parties with Jeff Epstein on Pedophile Island? A strange quiet falls upon the land. If Rush Limbaugh had joked about running over Jewish children with his German car, there would be a presidential speech on the matter in the works.
Will Noah survive? Of course he will. And that’s not a bad thing, actually:
I can’t wait to write the first of many with this headline… “Racist Daily Show Host @TrevorNoah Calls GOP Racist.” #popcorntime #lulz
— John Nolte (@NolteNC) March 31, 2015
2016 is gunna be awesome when Brian Williams attacks others for dishonesty and @Trevornoah calls people racist.
— John Nolte (@NolteNC) March 31, 2015
Not to mention, what Viacom’s hiring decision implies regarding their current forecast for after 2016 as well.
Update: Brilliant headline on the Comedy Central kerfuffle from Mark Steyn: “There’s Noah Business Like Shoah Business:”
Anyway, passing through Britain only a few days ago, I got back after dinner and thought I’d watch ten minutes of TV before turning in. Unfortunately, it was the BBC’s annual “Comic Relief” fundraiser, a long night of leaden jests and forced jollity, in the midst of which up popped Mr Noah:
[Click over for video — Ed]
He talked about a recent flight from South Africa to the United States, where immigration officials asked him whether he’d come into contact with Ebola – notwithstanding that South Africa is nowhere near Ebola-stricken West Africa. As Mr Noah joked:
I don’t really blame them – ’cause look, the truth is most Americans don’t know much about South Africa…
Well, they don’t know much about Africa as a whole…
Well, most of them don’t know much about anything…
Whether that’s true of Americans it’s certainly true of the “Daily Show” audience. I suspect once this awkward little sizeist-Jew thing is smoothed over that he’ll confine himself to the old reliables — the stupidity of Palin, the stupidity of Cruz, the stupidity of [Your Republican Here] — that will keep Jon Stewart liberals splitting their sides for the next half-decade.
Clapter really is the best medicine.
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